AI Object Removal - which phone is best?

Samsung Galaxy AI

Samsung's Galaxy AI was the best, by far. It handled both easy and complex tasks alike and, for the most part, produced good to acceptable results.

Samsung's solution is the easiest one to work with, and we can't overstress this enough. Getting to its eraser interface took the least number of steps, and the software was the fastest at masking objects. Galaxy AI's object recognition is immensely superior to the rest of the pack, needing a quick (and vague) finger drawing around a subject to recognize it.

Galaxy AI is also impressive with complex tasks - removing the glasses from a face, or the beanie from someone's head. It won't hesitate to generate new facial features.

However, Samsung's AI can be unreliable. It did fail in two of our test images and simply refused to remove a distraction from the image. It also leaves lower-quality, blurry patches where it's been used, which can be noticeable. Especially on human features.

There is also the matter that AI, not just Galaxy AI, struggles with generating text. Samsung's AI failed to generate coherent spelling in our testing. The generated text blends in nicely, but you can see something is wrong with it as soon as you zoom in to check the spelling.

Pros

• Works fast
• A single tap to get into object removal
• Excellent subject and object recognition
• Top-notch texture generation
• No human-related limitations

Cons

• Requires an internet connection
• Requires a Samsung account
• Did fail to remove distractions in two images
• Limits the photo to 12MP
• Leaves a photo watermark
• Soft, blurry patches in photos

Apple Clean Up

Apple's AI solution is the only one here that doesn't leave a lesser-quality patch of generated pixels - there is no blurriness and no drop in clarity, colors, or sharpness. However, the fidelity of the generated textures isn't great. Most of the time, you can spot where AI was used.

Subject recognition isn't very good. We often needed to draw multiple masks around subjects and objects to get the result.

Clean Up will also fail at any sort of human features. To its credit, Apple's AI will at least try, even if unsuccessfully, to generate content on top of anything. When it comes to complex tasks, Clean Up is still in its infancy and will fail. Being part of Apple Intelligence, Clean Up is also not available in some regions.

Pros

• Works offline
• Can handle most easy shots reasonably well
• Doesn't leave a blurry spot
• Will try, even if it can't do it

Cons

• Texture generation isn't good
• Subject recognition isn't good
• Messes up human features
• Not available to everyone

Google Magic Eraser

Google's Magic Eraser, despite being early to the party, is far from the best. Sometimes it does a good job of removing something and generating the needed patterns or textures to fill it in, but other times it's noticeably worse than the rest.

It's also not very good at recognizing things to remove and will not mask correctly when you manually draw something for it to remove. Like Apple's solution, Magic Eraser can't handle human faces either.

Magic Eraser is also unintuitive to find. It can be as easy as tapping to edit an image and Magic Eraser popping up as a suggestion, but it happens very rarely. Most of the time, it required a tap on the Edit button, then a scroll to Tools, then another tap. Add to that the less-than-stellar subject detection, and the experience in its entirety isn't great.

Pros

• Works offline
• Automatically detects subjects to remove, sometimes

Cons

• Up to three taps away
• Texture generation isn't good
• Subject recognition isn't good

Xiaomi AI Eraser

Xiaomi's AI Eraser, AI Erase Pro, or AI Erase 2.0, all the same thing for our purposes here, comes very close in its end results to Samsung. It seems to have the right tools but consistently failed to be good at using them - it can generate complex textures but it sometimes fails on the easy parts; it can generate human features, but it sometimes leaves a sideburn; it can remove objects in a way that's believable but will fail with some patterns like tiles.

And getting to the end result requires a lot of tinkering. Subject recognition is plain bad, requiring multiple masks to get something that's normally easy, correctly.

Xiaomi's AI is also unreliable. It's slow (possibly because it's processed on Chinese servers), and it didn't even work from time to time. Yes, the potential is there, but the practical experience is just as important, and it isn't as good as it could be.

Pros

• Works for both easy images and complex tasks

Cons

• The hardest to get to at four taps
• Slow and internet dependent
• Very poor subject detection
• Leaves blurry patches

Conclusion

Summary time. We would say that each AI eraser tool we tested is nice to have. They will all fix your vacation photo in a pinch and do it in a way that will leave you satisfied. We're natural pixel-peepers here at GSMArena, but we understand that's not the norm - most people would be wowed by the AI removal tools in phones today and would not bother to zoom in on the small details.

People will use AI erasers to play around while on the bus, train, or plane ride back home and will look at these photos on their smartphone screens. And we're sure nobody will go looking for blurry patches or texture errors in their photos - the idea is to make that social media post a bit nicer and cleaner.

However, we need to give a verdict here. Samsung's solution is the best. It needs an initial setup that won't be to everyone's liking, but it's smooth sailing after that (just make sure you're online). It's the easiest to get to and it works with the least amount of hassle - simpy draw around the thing you want gone and Galaxy AI will do the rest.

Galaxy AI is levels above Google and Apple in texture and pattern generation. It can scan an image for clues and then imagine a coherent part of it when it needs to, no matter the complexity of the thing you're removing - props to Samsung for that! However, it needs to deal with the blurriness that's left wherever AI has touched.

We'd call it a tie after Galaxy AI. Xiaomi's AI Eraser does better in texture generation and can work with human faces, unlike Google's Magic Eraser and Apple's Clean Up, but it's much more unreliable, has bad subject detection, and slow generation times. Not to mention the tech expert level you need just to get to Xiaomi's AI erase tool.

The experience matters - Apple and Google's solution is easier to use than Xiaomi's, and we expect more people would use it. Apple is still new to this so we can forgive it some shortcomings. It's impressive that it can generate building details and tiles to the level that it can. But Google was first to the AI eraser party, and it's worse at those basics, which isn't easily excusable.

These tools will only get better from here on out. But even at this early stage, we expect most people are still in the "I can't believe how good this is" phase, so all's well that ends well.